Startup Geometry Podcast Scott Gosnell

Hello and welcome back to the Startup Geometry Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Windcastle Press, where a new pair of hardbacks of my translation of Giordano Bruno’s On The Shadows Of Ideas will soon be available.

We’re back after a long break to talk to Greg Kaminsky, host of the Occult of Personality Podcast, and author of two new books: Pronaos, dealing with the ngondro or preliminary practices of Vajrayana Buddhism, and Celestial Intelligences, dealing with the esoteric writings of Renaissance philosopher and magus Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, best known for his manifesto Oration on the Dignity of Man.



 

Download the episode here, or find us on your favorite podcatcher.

I am, by temperament and experience, more sanguine about all of this than he is. I tend to think things will eventually work themselves out over time. My enlightenment experiences have been mild and pleasant; if mine had been as harrowing as his, I would probably feel as he does.

As a technical note, there were some sound issues on our Transatlantic Skype call, which occasionally made it sound as though one of us was conducting the call while having a bath or as if we had ghost hunter-style EVPs from beyond the grave on the line. I apologize for these and hope they do not interfere with your listening enjoyment.







Photo: Robin Hood Co-op

 

















Photo: Robin Grane-McCalla









Show Notes and Links



Vinay Gupta

@leashless on twitter

Mattereum

Internet of Agreements

The Gupta State Failure Management Archive

Hexayurt

re.silience



Paul Wilson, The Calm Technique

Ethereum

Scott Nelson, Sweetbridge

Healing Earth Resources

Rocky Mountain Institute

BKS Iyengar, Light on Yoga




Nath tradition

Gurkhas

Yogiraj Gurunath Siddanath

Camelia Elias holds a PhD and DPhil and spent the last twenty years as a professor of literature, most recently at Roskilde University in Denmark. Recently, she escaped academia to start an online school, Aradia Academy, where she teaches cartomancy (card reading); that is, how to read—yourself, someone else, books, pictures, films, the situation, the problem, or anything else—without belief, emotion, preconceptions or other obscurations getting in the way.

 

She recently said, “Why is reading cards fascinating? Because their visual language allows us to bypass everything we know or think we know.”

 

Boiling our conversation down to the keywords, we talk about:



interesting—curiosity—dullness—belief—vastness—strategy—one cut—the present circumstances—”and yet”—concrete—psychomagic—Jodorowsky—Freud—Boom!







(L to R) Dr. Camelia Elias, Freya





 

Today, I talk with Gary Lachman about his latest book, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. We discuss the need to balance the analytic “survival mode” consciousness of the external world with an older way of thinking that prioritizes the inner landscape and the imagination. We also discuss the necessity of creative outlets to regulate how much of the sensory world we take in and process, to open the valve all the way for peak experience and dial it down so we remember to do the dishes.

I spend a good bit of the interview groping toward, but never reaching, the concept of a gestalt as a shorthand mental representation of external or internal objects. Some events do not pack down well to a gestalt representation, while others form new gestalts on close examination. This process of gestalt analysis and synthesis runs behind the conversation we have here.

Gary Lachman is the author of twenty-one books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. He has written a rock and roll memoir of the 1970s, biographies of Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, P. D. Ouspensky, and Colin Wilson, histories of Hermeticism and the Western Inner Tradition, studies in existentialism and the philosophy of consciousness, and about the influence of esotericism on politics and society. He writes for several journals in the UK, US, and Europe, including Fortean Times, Quest, Strange Attractor, Fenris Wolf, and his work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Times Educational Supplement, Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Sunday Times, Mojo, Gnosis and other publications. He lectures regularly in the UK, US, and Europe, and his work has been translated into a dozen languages. He has appeared in several film and television documentaries and on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and is on the adjunct faculty in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Before becoming a full-time writer Lachman studied philosophy, managed a new age bookshop, taught English Literature, and was a Science Writer for UCLA. He was a founding member of the pop group Blondie and in 2006 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lachman was born in New Jersey, but since 1996 has lived in London, UK.

 



 

 



 

I used to see some amazing obituaries, often in British newspapers, detailing a remarkable life lived by someone who had worked undercover during WWII, escaped from Nazis, and gone on to live to a great old age. Frequently, these people were forgotten or never spoke of their adventures.

Elizabeth Smith Friedman, the subject of Jason Fagone’s new biography, The Woman Who Smashed Codes, is one of those rare people, though her story begins with a search for the true author of Shakespeare, runs through two world wars, includes a stint fighting gangsters and rumrunners (and the jealousy of J. Edgar Hoover) and the foundation of the NSA, and ends with more Shakespeare. It sounds like a whole series of detective novels rolled into one, yet Elizabeth was a real person with an amazing story.

 

Daniel Ingram has a successful career as an ER doctor, but he’s best known on the Internet for being a meditator and meditation teacher. He’s the author of Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: an Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, which I first read about over on Scott Alexander’s blog Slate Star Codex here and here. Daniel made some waves in the dharma community by claiming to have attained enlightenment as an arahat.

On today’s podcast, we talk about the different ways to assess that claim, what states and insights may occur on the way to enlightenment, and what to do if you get yourself into a spiritual crisis of one sort or another. We also talk about some of my meditative experiences and how to use a candle flame as a focus for meditative practice.